Seinfeld out for Microsoft? Who cares – Look at the buzz
Only a few weeks into the new campagn, Microsoft has pulled the plug on pitchman Jerry Seinfeld. According to Microsoft, the move was planned from the beginning. Given the amount of time that it takes to shoot a commercial and the fact they apparently have a new one set to debut this week, it is fairly believable.
My interest here is the sheer amount of conversation this move has created. I’m not sure if Crispin Porter + Bogusky is that brilliant, but they did claim from the beginning they were trying to get people to talk about windows and the campaign. That has most certainly been achieved. The two million video views on youtube, as noted in my prior post, is pretty strong evidence.
What I remain puzzled by is such moves have created a negative buzz. The old rule of PR was: “I don’t care what they say, just make sure they spell the name right” but I can’t believe it applies in this case. Also if as rumored they are going straight after the much beloved Mac/PC ads, they are certain to encounter an even bigger storm of negativity.
However, the person that really needs to be convinced is not the online elitist, but an “average” consumer who doesn’t write blogs or get as involved in advertising and marketing as some others. Is the bewilderment over the first couple of ads real for them, or did they just enjoy watching Seinfeld again? Did people start to change their opinion of Microsoft after seeing some commercials that were nearly completely unrelated to actual products? Will they even attribute those few vignettes to Microsoft at all? My guess is most people somewhat enjoyed the commercials and shifted their opinion every so slightly positively for Microsoft. It’s nudging a battle ship, but still an ever so slight move in the right direction.
There’s still a big risk to this approach, and according to most the effort has been very expensive. Microsoft is attacking a huge strategic problem of a bad corporate image in a very unusual way, but with an impressive and patient approach.
